Stickly / Shaker hybrid display cabinet

[wtnhighlander]

Be forewarned, this project will progress in fits and starts. Sorry for the 'postus interruptus'.

LOML requested a piece to replace a cheap, ugly book case with doors. After much discussion and scrolling through Pinterest, we settled on this design, blending features from Shakr and Stickley pieces, and dimensioned to meet our needs.

Glass doors above, flat panels below. The arch detail is my adfition to the design mix.

 

[wtnhighlander]

The material is some rather scruffy walnut.

It was cheap, but maybe not worth the savings. I spent a deal of time laying out the parts I needed, oversized, to work within the material. The milling process by cutting the oversized parts to length with a jigsaw. I follow that by ripping a straight-ish edge on each plank, using my ripping jig against my extended fence.

After that, subsequent rips are made with the straight edge against the fence, no jig. If there is significant twist or cup, I knoch it down enough to remain stable on the table.

Once the parts are roughed out, it is time to flatten a face. I used hand planes, and a powered one where a lot of stock needed to be removed. 

For small parts, I used a 24" steel ruler to check flatness, but the longer rail stock was just checked by sighting down each corner. I also touched up the edges, square to the face, as needed.

For thicknessing, I go to great lengths  to avoid running my DW 735 scream machine. These parts are narrow enough to tackle at the table saw.

With my taller, longer fence appliance adjusted as squarely to the table as possible, I made a single, full depth pass, shaving off about 1/8" and leaving my stock nicely thicknessed to 3/4". A few swipes with my hand plane removed any burn marks. Note that I use a push block with a sacrificial sole and hook, effectively preventing the work or waste pieces from kicking back at any point. This takes a slow feed in my 1.75hp saw, but the result was pretty decent.

Next, I started forming tenons on the short cross rails, using the miter gauge and a stop block.

I only got so far as to lay out the motices on the long stiles, and I still need to fab a little jig for my router to cut them. I am only milling up pieces for one construction step at a time, hoping to avoid any movement after milling, since there will be significant breaks between steps.

 

[wtnhighlander]

After a couple weeks of being swamped with OSTD (other stuff to do), I got a couple hours in the shop today.

The trim router w/fence and recently-added leg vise worked well to mortice the stiles of the cabinet side panels.

This bar magnet from Harbor Freight worked as an improptu fence for my bandsaw, letting me cut the tenons to size. I use a whittlin' jack to round the corners.

After a little planing of the tenin cheeks, everything came together as a rough assembly. I spent the remainder of my available time shuffling stacked parts around so I could work on the panels to go into the frames. Nothing to show for that, yet, just flattening rough boards.

The astute observer may note the extra length at the top of the frame stiles, an allowance for trimming flush after glue-up. You might also notice the frame has not been grooved for the panels, yet. I need to resaw some stock for the panels, and thought it best to hold off grooving until I can be sure of the panel thickness.

[Coop]

I like your versatility in using the ts and hand planes in lieu of the 735. 

[wtnhighlander]

Thanks, but it is a boatload of work. The powered hand plane has already paid for itself.

[wtnhighlander]

Resawing is mostly at the TS, but a little handwork is needed down the middle of board more than 7" wide. I am amazed by the holding power of the simple leg vise. Why did you guys let me go so long without??? 

Who says you can't make veneer with a tablesaw?

Thicknessing this way let me squeeze two 3/8" boards out of one slightly oversized 4/4 rough board. The one pictured was the thickest. The others just shaved dust off the final cut.

After a surprisingly small amout of cleanup via hand plane, my bookmatched panels made it to glue-up. I clamped the battens across to keep them from 'tenting' under pressure of the pipe clamps.

Does anyone other than Irwin make pipe clamps with slip clutches on both heads? These are really handy for un-threaded pipe. They let me put to use a bunch of 24" galvanized rigid conduit sections recovered from a play set I built for C when he was little.

 

[Coop]

I didn’t know there was such a thing. I thought all pipe clamps relied on threads on one end. I have access to plenty of unthreaded pipe but since retirement, not so much on a pipe threader. Thanks! 

[curlyoak]

Even with the right equipment, TS, jointer, thickness planer, it still is the most physical work of the project. Then do it without the machinery is a hugh effort. I remember using my table saw as a thickness planer. The labor savings with the equipment is enormous. Start with a jointer. 6" x 48" minimum . Look for a used one. Good luck.

[wtnhighlander]

Good advice, @curlyoak. But to be clear, I have a decent planer. I use the TS whenever possible because the DW 735 is so loud. Even from my separate (but close) and fully-insulated shop, the high-pitched scream annoys the family to the point that I won't use it unless I am home alone. Power and space limitations in my current shop prevent using a jointer of any capacity. I have a 6" benchtop unit that is ok for smaller parts, but they are about as easy to do on the TS, so I rarely dig it out from under the workbench.

[wtnhighlander]

So, after a 6 month hiatus, I was finally able to work on this a bit.

All I managed to do was route grooves inro the rail & stile parts I made in the spring. Then I needed to measure for the panel, so I made 2 sets of pinch sticks, long and short.

I do need to grab some shorter bolts though.

 

[wtnhighlander]

A little shop time during football today. Got the panels cut and the sides dry-fit.

Some of this walnut is quite poorly sawn, but at least it is thick. I needed to take near 1/4" off a piece to get it flat, so I rigged a setup that I'd seen done with a router table, only I used my TS and just the chippers from my dado stack.

After setting the cutter height to match the strip of ply, I ran the ply part way through to remove the width of the cutter. This offset provided a 'fence' leading into the cut, with support behind the cut. By taking successive passes, with the 3/8" rabbet formed by the previous pass supported on the ply, I was able to mill a fairly flat face.

A little hand plane work removed the tracks. Much easier to take a few shavings from a relatively flat board, than to plane away 1/4" or more of gnarly crotch grain.

[treeslayer]

Good to see you back on this project Ross, really like the book match panels 

[Chet]

On 11/4/2023 at 4:33 PM, wtnhighlander said:

A little shop time during football today.

If you were watching Tennessee they didn't have much of a challenge today.

[wtnhighlander]

9 hours ago, Chet said:

If you were watching Tennessee they didn't have much of a challenge today.

That's what LOML tells me. She is the football fan of the family, hence my available shop time on Saturdays in the fall! 

[Mark J]

I didn't really understand the TS/dado operation.  If you can, go a little more step by step.  

[wtnhighlander]

@Mark J, I have no more photos, but this is where I saw it done with a router table:

Concept is the same for TS, just a slightly different setup on the plywood platform.

I have a different method I plan to use on the next few boards, I'll try to document that in more detail.

[Mark J]

I get it, now.  I would definitely limit the use to small boards I want to save.

Curious why you only used your dado chippers?  Do your "end" blades cut a little deeper?

[wtnhighlander]

@Mark J, yes - the side cutter blades have beveled teeth that leave "bat ear" tracks in the dado. The chippers alone are flat topped. I still had tracks because the 1/4" ply was not rigid enough to avoid flexing as the work crossed the throat plate area.

The reasons I used the TS over my router table are 1) horsepower and 2) dust collection.

[wtnhighlander]

My time today was spent turning wannabe firewood into something that resembles flat, square lumber.

I used a simple pair of MDF rails to suspend each plank in a consistent plane, and passed it repeatedly across my dado stack chippers.

Observe this incredibly deformed scrap of white oak that was my test piece.

 

I set the chippers barely above the table surface.

The rails are glued to each side of the scrap. On my actual workpieces, I used brass screws.

A straight line rip sled give a good edge to attach the rails.

Sorry for the poor image, but I think you can see that after repeated passes through the saw, moving the fence and rotating the work each pass, the wonky plank now has a clean, flat face.

The rest of the day was more of the same, now I have 8 flat boards, where before, there were none.

I don't recommend this technique, if you have any better option. It seems safe enough, if the rails are solidly attached, and can maintain contact with the saw top throuought the cut. If I do any more, I think I'll build a more sophisticated carrier rail system that can clamp the board edges and includes a reference ledge at the bottom to hold the work at a known distance above the table.

This method works identically on a router table, but a table saw can generally take deeper bites.

Also, this method is great for flattening end-grain glue-ups,like cutting boards, Although I would add a backer strip across each end to minimize chip out of the trailing edge.

[Mark J]

14 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

This method works identically on a router table, but a table saw can generally take deeper bites.

Indeed.  It is very similar to the router table method I use to flatten turning blanks which I need to be very square.  

I make the runners/skids from two layers of ply with one narrower than the other.  The narrow side goes toward the cutter so that there's a "rabbit like" space for the cutter to enter w/o necessarily cutting the runner.

[wtnhighlander]

Obviously, my redneck-engineered planing system isn't perfect. It was very difficult to achieve uniform thickness from board to board without a good reference to locate the board. I also left some 'low spots' intentionally, expecting to smooth them with a hand plane, and not leave a 'machined' surface. This piece is supposed to have a rustic, hand-made look, I only hope I don't take it from 'made by hand' into the realm of 'looks like crap'.

Glued some shelf panels today....

Yes, I did match them the best I could, considering they should be kindling. The more visible panels look slightly better than the one pictured.

[wtnhighlander]

I felt recovered from my headcold , enough to go to the shop during the game today. Not much progress, as I had to do some reconstructive surgery to correct a boo-boo. My table router (shop-made) plate shifted when I was routing grooves for the case side panels, so I ripped some this strips to fill in the gap.

Lacking enough spring clamps, I employed use # 9367 of my favorite shop accessory...door shims. They made perfect pincers for an F-clamp to reach into the groove.

There were also a couple of places that splintered out aling the edge. These will be hidden in the finished case,so I experimentented with building fill from layers of plane shavings and glue, sort of hammer-veneer fashion. We'll see how that looks tomorrow.

I spent some time cutting joinery to add a parallel guide to my unfinished leg vise, but forgot to snap a pic.

[wtnhighlander]

Quick update...stealing away for a few minutes here and there makes for slow progress. I made some web frames to hold the side panels together, thinking the grain orientation would avoid movement issues better than just letting the top, bottom, and mid-shelves into dadoes cut in the side panels. Here are a couple of progress shots, with the structure just clamped together. I still need to cut sliding dovetails to mate the frames to the side panels.

Sorry, its hard to get larger pieces in frame, as small as my space is.

I used bridle joints for the frames. First frame, I cut by hand. The other two were done using a vertical tenoning jig on my table saw. Given the 'builder grade' precision of my machines, it was actually no slower to do them by hand.

Gotta love how bridle joints square themselves!

[gee-dub]

Really coming along now.  Lots of great tips and tricks in this thread.  Love the magnet for a fence on the bandsaw trick; brilliant.  I too am a bridle joint fan.  And of course anything worth making is worth making out of walnut .

[wtnhighlander]

Fixing screw-ups are where most of the best tips turn up, it seems! 

Thanks for the props, @gee-dub!